The Cinnamon Bun Contract
A Cozy Mystery

About this book:

Clara Finch's cinnamon buns are legendary in Oakhaven—warm, buttery, and laced with her grandmother's secret Saigon spice blend. But legend doesn't pay the mortgage. With the bank circling, the power company threatening shutoff, and a critical yeast shipment back-ordered until Monday, Clara is kneading dough at 4 a.m. and praying for a miracle. Instead, she gets Julian Sterling: impeccably dressed, unsettlingly informed, and carrying a contract that promises to save her bakery in exchange for six cinnamon buns a week, delivered after hours to clients she'll never meet. The money is immediate. The ingredients are top-tier. The confidentiality clause is absolute. And the "special additives" he wants folded into the dough? Those aren't on any label.

By the time Clara signs, the scones are burning and the first body is cooling in the alley.

Now Clara's baking for a clientele that doesn't exist in any directory, using supplements that make her customers *devoted*—and watching the townspeople she's fed for years change in ways that have nothing to do with comfort food. Between the handsome deputy asking too many questions, the rival baker who knows too much, and the clause in her contract that might just be a death sentence, Clara has until the autumn festival to untangle what Julian's "clients" actually consume. In a town where everyone knows your business, the most dangerous ingredient isn't arsenic—it's the fine print.